All things freshwater: news, analysis, humor, reviews, and commentary from Michael E. 'Aquadoc' Campana, hydrogeologist, hydrophilanthropist, Professor of Hydrogeology and Water Resources Management in the Geography Program of the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences (CEOAS) at Oregon State University and Emeritus Professor of Hydrogeology at the University of New Mexico. He is Past President of the American Water Resources Association (AWRA), Past Chair of the Scientists & Engineers Division of the National Ground Water Association (NGWA), Past President of the nonprofit NGWA Foundation and President and Founder the nonprofit Ann Campana Judge Foundation, an organization involved with WaSH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) in Central America. He serves on the Steering Committee of the Global Water Partnership (GWP). CYA statement: with the exception of guest posts, the opinions expressed herein are solely those of Michael E. Campana and not those of CEOAS, Oregon State University, ACJF, AWRA, NGWA, GWP, my spouse Mary Frances, or any other person or organization.

Texas Agriculture Law BlogDon't let the name fool you - there are lots of water issues in agriculture and Tiffany Dowell of Texas A&M University does a fabulous job with this important Internet resource. Give it a read - I do every day!

The Way of WaterOregon State University Geography PhD Student, Jennifer Veilleux, records her fieldwork, research, and thoughts about transboundary water resources development in the Nile River and Mekong River basins. Particular attention is given to Ethiopia's Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and Laos' Xayaburi Dam projects.

Thirsty in SuburbiaGayle Leonard documents things from the world of water that make us smile: particularly funny, amusing and weird items on bottled water, water towers, water marketing, recycling, the art-water nexus and working.

This Day in Water HistoryMichael J. 'Mike' McGuire, engineer extraordinaire, NAE member, and author of 'The Chlorine Revolution', blogs about historical happenings in the fields of drinking water and wastewater keyed to calendar dates.

Watershed Moments: Thoughts from the HydrosphereFrom Sarah Boon - rediscovering her writing and editing roots after 13 years, primarily as an environmental scientist. Her writing centres around creative non-fiction, specifically memoir and nature writing. The landscapes of western Canada are her main inspiration.

Even where I live now - western Oregon's Willamette Valley - was not spared the wrath of the raging waters unleashed by the dam's failure.

Almost too much for a 20-year-old from Long Island to fathom!

Lake Missoula was larger (volume-wise) than Lakes Erie and Ontario combined - 550 cubic miles versus about 512 cubic miles; the ice dam forming the lake was about 2000 feet high. The dam was part of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet near the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, about 15,000 - 18,000 years ago. It blocked what is now the Clark Fork River to form the lake.

At the time I learned all this (c. 1969) we thought it had happened just once. But there's now strong evidence suggesting that Lake Missoula emptied and filled dozens of times.

Early geologists recognized the unusual aspects of the scablands but could not explain them. The proposal that the scablands were produced by a catastrophic flood was not greeted with enthusiasm by geologists of the early 20th century.

From the Montana Natural History Center:

Two geologists, J. Harlen Bretz and Joseph T. Pardee, were instrumental in finding the solution to this geologic mystery. Bretz spent a great deal of his life studying the geologic landscape of eastern Washington. He dubbed the scarred landscape "The Channeled Scablands", and in 1923 he began to publish a series of papers on the Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington. Bretz realized that only moving water could have formed the features in eastern Washington. Bretz proposed what many people thought was an outrageous hypothesis; these features must have been formed by large scale flooding of catastrophic proportion.

The geologic community received the idea of a catastrophic flood poorly. At this time, most geologists abided by the principles of Uniformitarianism, [as opposed to Catastrophism] the idea that past geological events can be explained by forces observable today. Since a flood of that proportion had never been seen, Bretz's idea was quickly dismissed. To make matters worse, Bretz could not identify the source of this catastrophic flood. The controversy ensued until 1942 when Joseph T. Pardee introduced new evidence suggesting a possible source for the catastrophic flood.

So why am I 'channeling' my early days as a budding geologist?

Just a few days ago, The Oregonian carried a wonderful story about a first: the USGS's computer simulation of one particular megaflood that occurred between 15,000 and 18,000 years BP. The graphic below is byEric Baker of The Oregonian and shows four snapshots over the course of the draining of Lake Missoula: 550 cubic miles of water in 55 hours!

Maximum discharge was about 1.3 billion gallons per second, about 1,000 times the Columbia River's current average flow, with water levels as much as about 1,000 feet above the river level when the flood entered the Columbia River Gorge. When it arrived at the current site of Portland, OR, the flood was still about 400 feet above the normal river stage.

But controversy persists. A few scientists assert that the cataclysmic floods must have had multiple sources, not just an outburst from Lake Missoula. John Shaw of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, for instance, has proposed that an enormous reservoir beneath the ice sheet over much of central British Columbia boosted the flooding.

The new simulation suggests that discharge from Lake Missoula alone would have been powerful enough. The simulated flood reaches peak stages all along its route that match the evidence visible today in sediment, with one big exception: At Wallula Gap, water levels in the simulation fell short by as much as 130 feet.

"It's pretty clear, if Lake Missoula is enough to hit all the other high water marks, you don't need another source of water," Denlinger [Roger Denlinger of the USGS] said. Calculating the convoluted paths of such a massive flood requires an immense amount of number crunching. Simulating one flood requires more than 8 months of computer time, Denlinger said.

But the computer simulation isn't likely to end the debate. The fact that it can't reproduce the maximum flooding at Wallula Gap leaves room for doubts. And some experts say there is direct evidence for an additional source of flood waters from beneath the ice sheet that covered the Okanagan Valley [in Canada].

"It is conceivable that other valleys in southern British Columbia contributed water to the scablands but the field evidence necessary to test these possibilities has not been fully documented," said earth scientist Jerome-Etienne Lesemann at the University of Aarhus in Denmark.

"There are a number of unanswered questions," he said. "That makes the whole Channeled Scablands story a really interesting and intriguing geological puzzle."

Hydrology gone wild! Amazing!

"Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice." -- Will Durant

I spent the first 12 years of my life in Missoula. We lived near the university just below a fair-sized mountain. Sometimes we'd hike to the top and explore caves and such, and wondered why there were so many sea shells everywhere. Even before we were educated in such things, we speculated that everything around us must have been underwater long ago...

Yes, it was wonderful - the event, that is!
You would have been obliterated.

I would love to see a demo of the simulations.

What was amazing was that the session on the Lake Missoula floods fomented a weeks-long discussion on 'catastrophism' vs. 'gradualism' and 'uniformitarianism.' And of course, this was long before concrete evidence of the meteorite impacts although they had been suggested by that time.

And Gerry Johnson was such a great teacher he might have made a paleontologist or a stratigrapher out of me!

Circle of BlueCircle of Blue uses journalism, scientific research, and conversations from around the world to bring the story of the global freshwater crisis to life. Here you’ll find new water reports, news headlines, and hear from leading scientists.

Drink Water For LifeThe idea is simple. Drink water or other cheap beverages instead of expensive lattes, sodas, and bottled water for a set period of time. A day, a week, a month, Lent, Ramadan, Passover, or some other holiday period.

eFlowNet NewsletterFrom the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) this newsletter has lots of information about environmental flows and related issues.

Sustainable Water Resources RoundtableSince 2002, the Sustainable Water Resources Roundtable (SWRR) has brought together federal, state, corporate, non-profit and academic sectors to advance our understanding of the nation’s water resources and to develop tools for their sustainable management.